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    It Was a Night to Stay In, But I Needed to Go Out

    It was not the kind of night to go across town to run an errand, but it was one that could not wait until after I cam back from vacation (picking up my passport from the company that processes visas for India).  I did not really feel the need to go shopping in Georgetown and would have rather gone straight home, but the rain was getting heavier and heavier and traffic was abominable.  A taxi would have been a pointless exercise in watching the meter while we barely moved.

    So I checked out “Fashion’s Night Out” in the stores near the bus stop.  I had a great time visiting with the DC Roller Girls, who were at the Lush store in Georgetown.   When the sales people start describing the products to me–they are always very enthusiastic–I often find myself telling them that I know what I need to know about Lush;  I first shopped at Lush when it was a single store in Covent Garden.

    When it was evident that the rain was not going to let up, and I’d had enough of window shopping from inside, I caught the Circulator bus and enjoyed myself taking photographs.   When there is little choice about going out in the rain, it is best, as my teachers remind me and the practices inspire me,  to find the beauty and the delight.

     

     

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    Praying Mantis (and pausing to make offering)

    This morning as I approached my office, I noticed in the middle of a wide patch of sidewalk that is flanked by the street on one side and a brick building on the other, with no tree boxes or other plantings for several yards in any direction, a praying mantis stranded in the middle.  I wondered how it had gotten there and worried that it would not survive if it was just stuck in a sea of concrete.

    I crouched and put out my finger.  The praying mantis crawled on to my hand.  I did not have time to go all the way back to the park next to the Capitol or to the nearest “island” with trees, but I took it to the nearest tree box, certain that there would be enough mosquitoes for it to eat well.  When I placed my hand next to the bush in the tree box and helped the praying mantis move onto the greenery, it first came back onto my hand again.  So I talked to it (as if it understood English) and encouraged it to get onto a branch (yes, I was getting some strange looks from passers by at this point).  I watched as the praying mantis eventually turned around and started moving into the denser foliage.

    With this act, did I make anything in the world better except give myself the joy of interacting with a wonderful being?  Does it matter?

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    Asta Vakrasana Variation

    I was working with photos today and came across this shot a friend took a little over a year ago.  Long gone is the memory of exactly why I did not stay fully in the pose.  Perhaps this was the beginning, and I was planning to plant my hand, lift my shoulder and hug my shoulder blades onto my back, and then do enough inner spiral and kidney loop to float off the ground.  Possible, as I have been known to get into asta vakrasana going from the ground up.  More likely, my exit strategy of the moment was releasing all the way to the floor.  What I like about this picture is that it shows me having a really good time, not me being a failure for not being perfectly in the pose.  Though it is always worth striving for the best we can do, for most things in life, the best we can do is try for the full pose and then find the joy and the beauty when we don’t end up embodying our notion of what should have been.

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    Interconnectedness

    This morning, on my last full day of vacation, on my way to leave my bags in the office of the bed and breakfast where I was staying before I walked about in Santa Fe for the day, I walked back through the breakfast room, where I had eaten an hour before.

    To my happy surprise, good friends from home (a former co-worker and his wife, whom I’d just been thinking about because I knew how much they like New Mexico) were there finishing their meal.

    We spent much of the day together, until I had to leave to catch the train to Albuquerque to be ready for tomorrow’s early morning flight back home.

    It felt a perfect completion of a trip made to study yoga and be in community for the week.

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